ASCAP Oct 94 15-17
Response to "Caught in the crossfire"
Thank you for sending me a copy of Thomas
Joiner's paper (1). I see he is working
in the tradition of James Coyne, taking an interpersonal, systems approach to
depression. I had not run across his
work before, and in fact only in the last year or two have I encountered James
Coyne himself, and I am certainly guilty of not acknowledging the latter's
ideas, such as when expressing them myself some years later (eg, 2). In the
recent series of journal clubs I took with the
I
found the Joiner paper interesting, and I have only one criticism which I will
get out of the way first. I think it is
confusing to use the terms "positive" feedback and
"negative" feedback for "positively reinforcing" and
"negatively reinforcing" feedback.
In terms of feedback, positive and negative already have very precise
meanings, of " deviation amplifying" and
"deviation reducing" respectively;
so, although I do not think there is any real danger of
misunderstanding, I think we should, if possible, avoid semantic
confusion. If "positively
reinforcing feedback" is too much of a mouthful, what about
"rewarding feedback" and "aversive feedback"? Of course, if you want to use ASCAP
terminology, you could always use "anathetic feedback" and
"catathetic feedback", as these are the meanings of those terms (to
raise and lower self-esteem, respectively).
Joiner
et al. studied mildly depressed college students and got their room-mates to
rate them on a scale of "satisfactoriness as room-mates" five weeks
later. They found that the depressed
students were rated as less satisfactory than non-depressed students, and they
try to account for it by the signals the depressed students gave to their
room-mates. The authors make the point
that depressives request both anathetic and catathetic feedback at the same
time, the anathetic to boost their lowered self-esteem, and the catathetic to
validate their low self-esteem. Any
signal which boosts them invalidates them, and any signal which validates them
puts them down.
This
crazy and unsatisfactory interpersonal exchange reminds me of Bateson and his double-bind (5) (e.g., "I command you
to disobey me!" Whatever you do,
you disobey this two-edged command). The
four criteria for a double bind are: 1) the eliciting of two incompatible
responses at the same time, both of which are punished; 2) frequent repetition
of the foregoing; 3) inability to "leave the field"; and 4) inability to metacommunicate (comment on the double-bind). These criteria seem to be met by the
situation of Joiner's depressed students and their room-mates. So, if the room-mates felt "double-bound",
it is not surprising that they found their depressed friends unrewarding to be
with.
I
think it might be interesting to apply our "hierarchical basic plan"
system to these students.
(insert Table 1 about here)
It is possible that the depressed students are
using affiliative (closeness-eliciting) behaviour that is trying to establish a
hedonic asymmetrical relationship, with the depressed student in the one-down
position. The two components of their
signal (eliciting rewarding and aversive feedback) relate to two different
aspects of the relationship they are trying to get. The reward-eliciting signals are part of
their attempt to get a hedonic relationship, of the type, "I like you, you are my friend".
But the signals which elicit aversive reinforcing feedback are their
attempt to establish themselves in the one-down position; they are submission signals; they are requests to be treated as a
subordinate.
One
can compare the depressed students with de Waal's
chimpanzees seeking "conditional reconciliation". This is a kissing and hugging session which
follows the fight and the loser's submission.
The reconciliation is contingent on the loser establishing the fact that
the other is now the dominant partner in the relationship. Once this is established, and the loser is
reassured that the winner accepts his submission, they start the hedonic
process of hugging. It's as if the
depressed students are trying to do the two things simultaneously, to have the
hugging before they have reassured themselves that the room-mate has accepted
their "submission". Until they
get this reassurance they are going to continue to be anxious and depressed,
and feel that the relationship is in the agonic mode.
Another reason that the room-mates may be uncomfortable is that they do
not want an asymmetrical relationship.
They may want to be equal, and the offers of submission are
unwelcome. Not only are they being
double-bound, they are being double-bound to achieve something that may be repellant to them.
Why
are the depressed students seeking the one-down position in an asymmetrical
relationship with a room-mate who is a peer and should be equal? One possibility is that they have difficulty
in establishing and maintaining equal hedonic relationships, either as a
personality trait ("authoritarian" personalities) or because they are
depressed. Being depressed, they cannot
cope with either the attempt to be one-up, or the maintenance of an equal
agonic relationship (which is much the same thing, if both room-mates are
competing for the one-up position). As
authoritarian personalities, they are operating according to the pernicious
Peter Principle that "he who is not one up is one down", possibly
learned on the school playground.
Another factor affecting the room-mate relationship is the self-focus
which is characteristic of depression.
It is difficult to enjoy the company of someone who is
self-focused. Why are depressives
self-focused? We tackled this question
in our debate about levels of submission.
Voluntary submission is other-focused; therefore depressive submission has to
be self-focused. Self-focused submission
is more submissive, and therefore more effective. Other-focused submission (flattery,
ingratiation, appeasement, arse-hole creeping, etc.,) is a form of social
climbing, and therefore not all that submissive. In a hierarchy of X, Y and Z, active
submission by Z to X is a threat to Y, whereas the self-focused submission of
depression is not threatening to anybody.
The
two room-mates are a dyadic relationship and therefore focused submission is
not going to threaten anyone. If one
were to counsel these students, one could encourage the depressed one to
flatter his room-mate, replacing involuntary submission with voluntary
submission. To the non-depressed
room-mate, one could say (apart from warning him about the anticipated
flattery, which might be as unwelcome as what went before) that he should
satisfy both of his room-mate's needs by saying something like, "you are a
wimp, but I love you". Perhaps the
dominance could be expressed physically, as in play wrestling, and the
affiliation both physically and verbally.
In other words, they need to have a fight, and then go to the bar and be
reconciled over a drink.
Cultural factors
Family backgrounds vary very much in
robustness, or "rough and tumble" qualities, both within and between
cultures. Some males seeking friendship
are aggressive, expecting the other to be equally aggressive, and to indulge in
a certain amount of play fighting. Males
from other backgrounds do not do this, and might find it off-putting, or even
misinterpret it as an attempt to establish dominance. For instance, the Maori welcoming ceremony is
extremely aggressive and frightening for the guest being welcomed; it is only
knowledge of the convention that enables one to stand one's ground and wait for
the friendly stage of the ceremony. Were
such cultural factors relevant to the miscommunication between the depressed
students and their room-mates?
An after-thought. We
have said that depression is one way of achieving low self-esteem, but it is
only one way among many, and it can be done by philosophy and religion or it
may come naturally. It is possible to be
perfectly happy while believing truly that one is worthless. In our predictions about depressives, it is
important to eliminate these voluntary low self-esteem characters. Therefore we need a depression scale which
does not include self-esteem items. And
the reverse holds. We need a self-esteem scale which does not include any
depressive items other than those directly related to ideas of self-worth. In most situations our predictions about the
depressed and happy low self-esteem people would be different, and in some
cases opposite. Basically, the happy low
self-esteem people love themselves, and the depressed low self-esteem people
hate themselves.
I hope
that the approaches of the ASCAPIANS and the JAMERS will be cross-fertilising
(I think this is a metaphor about two hermaphrodite individuals and therefore
does not contain any implication of asymmetry of any kind!). Certainly, I have found this to be the case
with "Caught in the crossfire".
They are sufficiently like us to be compatible, but sufficiently
different to be stimulating company.
References
1.
Joiner TE, Alfano MS & Metalsky
GI (1993) Caught in the crossfire: depression, self-consistency,
self-enhancement and the response of others.
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 12, 113-134.
2.
Price, J.S. (1991) Homeostasis or change? A systems theory approach
to depression. British Journal
of Medical Psychology, 64, 331-344.
3.
Coyne, J. (1976) Towards an interactional
description of depression. Psychiatry,
39, 28-40.
4. Coyne
JC, Downey G & Boergers J (1992) Depression in
families: a systems perspective. In Developmental Perspectives on Depression
ed D Cicchetti & SL Toth.
5.
Haley, J. (1976) Development of a theory: a history of a research project. In Double Bind: The Foundation of the Communicational
Approach to the Family, (eds C.E.Sluzki and D.C.Ransom).
Table 1. Some characteristics of the
hypothesised basic hierarchical plans.
Agonic mode Hedonic mode
a) stable hierarchy
dominant basic punitive protective
plan indignant
caring
"keep him down" "improve him"
egalitarian rivalrous
sharing
basic plan one-upmanship
friendship
subordinate fearful
respectful
basic plan coerced
into voluntary
obedience obedience
"placate him" "honour him"
b) change in hierarchy
(second order basic plans)
up-hierarchy beh- elevated mood elevated mood
avioral
package rebellion receipt of honours
"bring him
down" "surpass him"
down-hierarchy beh- depressed mood philosophical avioral
package denial of former attitude
high rank
devaluation of former rank
(Note: In order to take account of variation along the "horizontal dimension" we could have produced separate tables for close, middling and distant relationships, but this would not have altered the classification we have suggested.)